Monday, 31 March 2014

I was doing a bit of investigation into the Titan Find space helmets, following a very vague hunch that I might have seen one of them, back in the day, on those full page adverts for horror masks that used to be in most issues of Fangoria. To which ends I found myself on a rather brilliant blog looking at scans of old articles, adverts and catalogues from Don Post Masks. This it turns out is the name of the company that used to make these wonderful creations and advertise in the magazine. Anyway, after a bit of perusing, I stumbled over this image;

from this page....

...of the Don Post Masks 1977 catalogue. Now what's really of interest is not so much the "905 Alien" mask, as lovely as it is, but the helmet he's holding,. This unless I'm very much mistaken is the same one as featured in The Andromeda Strain, a design which popped up again in Titan Find.

And given the fella in the bottom middle picture seems to be brandishing one of the Sandman guns from Logan's Run it made me wonder if the photo shoot had been enhanced by a movie prop collector, someone such as William Malone, a well documented collector of SF memorabilia and also the director of Titan Find? Not sure if anyone can spill a little more light on this company and their relationship with Malone but if he was looking for someone to make him some looky-likey 2001 helmets a few years later, you would be hard pressed to find a more capable studio.

As a final thought, given that it was actually this helmet...

...I was investigating. I still feel like I've seen it in a Don Post advert but then I also think the creature inside looks a lot like this;

..so maybe that's influencing my thoughts. It's worth noting that Jukebox was an original design from the 1985 catalogue, and yes that's the same year that Titan Find came out. Coincidence?

Anyway, while you mull them thoughts over why don't you go over to The Blood Curdling Blog of Monster Masks which can be found by knocking on this door; http://monstermasks.blogspot.co.uk/

Saturday, 29 March 2014

It's been too many years since I watched this film; free tickets at the local cinema on first release so I'm guessing almost 30 of them, or near enough. I remember little other than being singularly unimpressed at the time and as such I made no effort to watch it again on video or DVD. However I am developing a minor fixation with it now, which will probably result in a second viewing sometime soon. The cause of this mini-obsession is of course the spacesuits and helmets and more specifically, identifying their origins. They are as featured below, identified as helmets 1, 2 & 3

Helmet 1

Helmet 2

Helmet 3

Helmet 1 is clearly 2001 inspired but I'd love to know where they came from or if they were made for this film or another ?

Helmet 2 is intriguing with shades of Star Wars Stormtrooper about it but beyond that I'm lost other than the feeling I've seen it before.

I'm also curios as to why the two images I've found of it, are from publicity material rather than the actual film. Is it a deleted scene? (Much like this image from the infamous Cantina afterhours lock-in scene from A New Hope)

Helmet 3 has already been identified as being the same design as was featured in The Andromeda Strain. As spotted by eagle-eyed blog follower SWGhostbuster.

Any thoughts and ideas from readers are more than welcome and I'll update the post accordingly

A recent comment from blog reader Sword Takeda in regard to Windak space suits, got be looking back at all my old posts and I realised, that while filling in the back story up to its best known appearance I had actually managed never to complete the journey. So this is me doing just that.

Ladies and Gentleman, may I present Bossk in what seems likely to be the last known appearance of the yellow Windak high altitude pressure suit.

Saturday, 15 March 2014

The Astronaut's Wife is a very odd film that feels like it should have been made in the early 70's. It's Rosemary's Baby meets Solaris with some very beautiful talented actors which should be enough for anyone and yet something's missing

Saturday, 8 March 2014

Steed is sent to research facility when a scientist developing a radiation-proof material dies of radiation.

I'm not going to tell you anything about The Avengers series its self other than its very cool, ran for quite a while and a more quintessential slice of 60's British television you will be hard pressed to find.

This is turning out to be the most recycled of space helmets/suits. I've blogged some and I keep finding more so I'm going to start keeping a list, which I will l update as we go along. Feel free to point out any I've missed.

There were 155 episodes of Sea Hunt over four seasons running from 1958 to 1961. The Aquanettes are from episode 12 of the fourth season. Now I don't think we ever got this over in the UK or if we did it was way before my time and never got repeated on my local ITV network.

So being ignorant to the show I'll quote IMDB for the episode description and leave it up to you to nod your head with nostalgia or shrug, depending on which side of the Atlantic you're living.

Mike takes part in a special program known as Operation Astronette. His job is to train three female astronauts in underwater survival skills.

Another Men into Space helmet appearance. More pretty girls in a space suit. What more do you want.